5 ms·

VB was basically terminated by Microsoft in favor of .net. It would have been (maybe still would be) amazing to see what the community would pull off with VB6

by kerng 7y ago

VB was basically terminated by Microsoft in favor of .net. It would have been (maybe still would be) amazing to see what the community would pull off with VB6 if Microsoft would open source it. VB6 IDE was so far ahead of it's time, even today (20+ years later) most languages don't have anything that comes close to what Microsoft had done there in the 90s. It would probabaly the perfect language for UI development and data analysis (think VBNotebooks), possibly ML.

WorldMaker 7y ago
The VB6 IDE is terrible and no one should have to use it today. It's UI tools were eventually bettered by the WinForms and WPF/UWP Designers. Having to work in the VB6 IDE against my better judgment still, I have zero nostalgia for it left.
- kerng 7y ago
  It was fast and slick - WinForms (and generally VS.net) was always slow in comparison with too many jobs and options - and WPF, same as WCF, is just an abstraction nightmare (and even slower compared to WinForms). People want simple, that's why Go is so successful these days - in many ways the enthusiasm (positive and negative) around Go reminds me of VB6. The fact that VB6 and IDE still works (didnt know that) on modern computers is by itself an amazing thing actually.
  - WorldMaker 7y ago
    Obviously we have very different opinions. > WinForms (and generally VS.net) was always slow in comparison It was slower at first, sure. Performance was a huge project over multiple years for Visual Studio and the WinForms designer hasn't been considered "slow" in years. > and WPF, same as WCF, is just an abstraction nightmare (and even slower compared to WinForms) Not really? XAML itself is a pretty direct representation of an object graph. More so than the hideously long Attribute blocks at the top of VB1-6 FRM files and the giant blobs of binary nonsense in FRX files. WPF Binding can be confusing, because like Vue or half the other web frameworks, two-way data binding is hard. But WPF has always supported classic double-click to code behind and set properties directly on window controls models of UI code writing, just like WinForms and VB1-6. Just about no one recommends it, for the same reason people recommend two-way binding systems like Vue because it can simplify other parts of your application and can be hugely beneficial on the other side of the learning curve. Mileage varies on the speed of the WPF designer. Again, performance is something that greatly improved over time. Most of my worst WPF performance problems, when I was using it regularly, were with third party controls I had no control over, and tried to get rid of. Personally, I'd greatly prefer to write XAML by hand in notepad than design in a UI in VB6 ever again. I'd complain a lot without tools to help me fix basic IntelliSense mistakes in my XAML, but I'd do it. Obviously, everyone's opinion will vary. > The fact that VB6 and IDE still works I cannot stress enough: it doesn't. The work I have to do in VB6 is pulling teeth. I have to do it in a VM that for reasons of security now has to be entirely isolated from network access. Even just scrolling code in that VM now takes what feels like subjective minutes to scroll just a few lines at a time. I'm constantly trying to use VS Code to comb through the codebase and prepare my plan of attack before ever opening the VM and it's like preparing punch cards for a Mainframe because I want to make sure I've prepared enough I spend as minimal time in that VM as possible. Navigating the VB6 in VS Code is horrible due to the aforementioned Attribute block garbage and absolutely no sense of navigation because all of the event handlers are wired in the FRX opaque whatsit from what I can tell and you can only assume that functions still do what they were named to do and that a `Form32_Load` wasn't actually repurposed to be `Button98_Click`. For the most part I'm thankful the codebase I'm working on isn't that evil, though I'm incredibly sick of VB6-era Hungarian notation at this point.
    - dole 7y ago
      A little late but mostly in the same boat with you, curious as to what you're using for a VM (W7 here). Sounds like a relatively massive project to be that painful to navigate but for most smaller purposes, the IDE still is at least serviceable. I've had Chrome (or the last versions available to be installed on W7 anyway) drop a bunch of startup resident crap that kills VM performance/network until cleaned up, and the scrolling issue (Ulli's VBMouseWheel?) doesn't sound typical, but you did say "subjective." Installing a full-text search app helped speed up searching through our codebase via VB6 IDE or VS2008's TFS Source Control Explorer, but you've probably been through most of this song and dance already.
      - kerng 7y ago
        This is so interesting, I had no idea there are still such big VB6 projects out there. Is this related to a particular industry? Too bad Microsoft didn't open source it.
      - WorldMaker 7y ago
        The VM originated as the physical machine of a previous developer and for a number of reasons is stuck at XP, hence a lot of the reasons it needs to be network isolated at this point. Also, because it is from an ancient image I don't want to break it because I doubt we could rebuild the ecosystem from scratch, it feels like it is stuck in VirtualBox, which is I think a large part of the slowdown because VirtualBox doesn't just directly support Hyper-V-based acceleration like just about everyone else finally does. I really need to convert it directly to a Hyper-V VM, but I don't have the free hard-drive space at the moment to have multiple VM copies around, haven't had the budget time, and I'm not sure I trust some of the available tools. I'm using the last build of Git for Windows I was able to get to install on XP, and I pray that there isn't a compatibility break as right now a shared worktree-less folder as "remote" to the VM internal repo is the only way I'm getting code in/out of the VM. I'm generally happy with VS Code outside of the VM for full text search, but VS Code can't build "Find All References" and "Go To/Peek Definition" maps, and that's the biggest itch that I miss, and VB6 IDE never had a good "Find All References" because it predates that tool in VS by like half a decade at least, and more than a decade before "Peek" sub-editors came about.
zubairq 7y ago
I totally agree which is why we are trying to make a vb style environment for the modern day at yazz.com

by kerng 7y ago

WorldMaker 7y ago

The VB6 IDE is terrible and no one should have to use it today. It's UI tools were eventually bettered by the WinForms and WPF/UWP Designers. Having to work in the VB6 IDE against my better judgment still, I have zero nostalgia for it left.

kerng 7y ago
It was fast and slick - WinForms (and generally VS.net) was always slow in comparison with too many jobs and options - and WPF, same as WCF, is just an abstraction nightmare (and even slower compared to WinForms). People want simple, that's why Go is so successful these days - in many ways the enthusiasm (positive and negative) around Go reminds me of VB6. The fact that VB6 and IDE still works (didnt know that) on modern computers is by itself an amazing thing actually.
- WorldMaker 7y ago
  Obviously we have very different opinions. > WinForms (and generally VS.net) was always slow in comparison It was slower at first, sure. Performance was a huge project over multiple years for Visual Studio and the WinForms designer hasn't been considered "slow" in years. > and WPF, same as WCF, is just an abstraction nightmare (and even slower compared to WinForms) Not really? XAML itself is a pretty direct representation of an object graph. More so than the hideously long Attribute blocks at the top of VB1-6 FRM files and the giant blobs of binary nonsense in FRX files. WPF Binding can be confusing, because like Vue or half the other web frameworks, two-way data binding is hard. But WPF has always supported classic double-click to code behind and set properties directly on window controls models of UI code writing, just like WinForms and VB1-6. Just about no one recommends it, for the same reason people recommend two-way binding systems like Vue because it can simplify other parts of your application and can be hugely beneficial on the other side of the learning curve. Mileage varies on the speed of the WPF designer. Again, performance is something that greatly improved over time. Most of my worst WPF performance problems, when I was using it regularly, were with third party controls I had no control over, and tried to get rid of. Personally, I'd greatly prefer to write XAML by hand in notepad than design in a UI in VB6 ever again. I'd complain a lot without tools to help me fix basic IntelliSense mistakes in my XAML, but I'd do it. Obviously, everyone's opinion will vary. > The fact that VB6 and IDE still works I cannot stress enough: it doesn't. The work I have to do in VB6 is pulling teeth. I have to do it in a VM that for reasons of security now has to be entirely isolated from network access. Even just scrolling code in that VM now takes what feels like subjective minutes to scroll just a few lines at a time. I'm constantly trying to use VS Code to comb through the codebase and prepare my plan of attack before ever opening the VM and it's like preparing punch cards for a Mainframe because I want to make sure I've prepared enough I spend as minimal time in that VM as possible. Navigating the VB6 in VS Code is horrible due to the aforementioned Attribute block garbage and absolutely no sense of navigation because all of the event handlers are wired in the FRX opaque whatsit from what I can tell and you can only assume that functions still do what they were named to do and that a `Form32_Load` wasn't actually repurposed to be `Button98_Click`. For the most part I'm thankful the codebase I'm working on isn't that evil, though I'm incredibly sick of VB6-era Hungarian notation at this point.
  - dole 7y ago
    A little late but mostly in the same boat with you, curious as to what you're using for a VM (W7 here). Sounds like a relatively massive project to be that painful to navigate but for most smaller purposes, the IDE still is at least serviceable. I've had Chrome (or the last versions available to be installed on W7 anyway) drop a bunch of startup resident crap that kills VM performance/network until cleaned up, and the scrolling issue (Ulli's VBMouseWheel?) doesn't sound typical, but you did say "subjective." Installing a full-text search app helped speed up searching through our codebase via VB6 IDE or VS2008's TFS Source Control Explorer, but you've probably been through most of this song and dance already.
    - kerng 7y ago
      This is so interesting, I had no idea there are still such big VB6 projects out there. Is this related to a particular industry? Too bad Microsoft didn't open source it.
    - WorldMaker 7y ago
      The VM originated as the physical machine of a previous developer and for a number of reasons is stuck at XP, hence a lot of the reasons it needs to be network isolated at this point. Also, because it is from an ancient image I don't want to break it because I doubt we could rebuild the ecosystem from scratch, it feels like it is stuck in VirtualBox, which is I think a large part of the slowdown because VirtualBox doesn't just directly support Hyper-V-based acceleration like just about everyone else finally does. I really need to convert it directly to a Hyper-V VM, but I don't have the free hard-drive space at the moment to have multiple VM copies around, haven't had the budget time, and I'm not sure I trust some of the available tools. I'm using the last build of Git for Windows I was able to get to install on XP, and I pray that there isn't a compatibility break as right now a shared worktree-less folder as "remote" to the VM internal repo is the only way I'm getting code in/out of the VM. I'm generally happy with VS Code outside of the VM for full text search, but VS Code can't build "Find All References" and "Go To/Peek Definition" maps, and that's the biggest itch that I miss, and VB6 IDE never had a good "Find All References" because it predates that tool in VS by like half a decade at least, and more than a decade before "Peek" sub-editors came about.

zubairq 7y ago

I totally agree which is why we are trying to make a vb style environment for the modern day at yazz.com